Polo The Consequences: First South West

Sunday 23^rd September saw the first day of the South West division for Cardiff Canoe Polo Club this season. With Andy Francis dislocating his arm at the last competition I have yet again had to write for Polo The Consequences. I very much hope this doesn’t become an ongoing theme, as I am not overly keen for the polo discipline, and obviously I hope Andy gets better or whatever. However, as I have to put up some info on the games, it gives me the opportunity to display some photos from my new DSLR camera. There has also luckily been a Kayak The Consequences blog recently if you would like to read and watch a video.

On the Monday before the weekend, I received a phone call from Blondie, one of the A-team players, asking me to play on the Sunday. I begrudgingly agreed, even though all I wanted to do on the weekend was chill out, mostly because I didn’t have any excuse to say no.

The weather on Sunday was terrible, I really was not in the mood for polo, even though it was an indoor comp, any climatic condition doesn’t exactly make polo interesting. Then I was told we only had four players; Either we had to try and convince a B-team player to stay on from their morning games, or play a man down against teams better than us. Luckily on arrival Morgan Williams agreed to stay on, which was a gain for us and a massive call from him.

So with my new Nikon D3200 I got into my photographer mindset. Unfortunately I’m none the wiser as to what I am doing with a DSLR, so a few of the photos came out dark, and some blurred. However the majority of the blog will be photos, and mostly of the Aberfan team, due to the fact that they were playing every other game, and I couldn’t exactly photograph our team! What the team, and the blog, ideally need is a chump to come along and take photos for us, but until that happens I will be fulfilling the chump roll.

The first game we had was against Bareforrest, and they gave us a decent pasting. I would attempt to give more detail, but really when it came down to it, they just scored a lot, and we didn’t.

Avon B was second, and this was a game that we could win. Playing reasonably well in the first half, I believe we were up. Yet in the second half we were playing as though it was still a draw, and with a break on us, Avon managed to get the goal for a draw. But it didn’t stop there, with Avon getting yet another goal to take the score in their favour by one. This was a disappointing loss, as we were playing as though we should have won.

With Cherwell as our third game, we were expecting a similar defeat as we saw against Bareforrest, but in the first couple minutes we scored. We played exceptionally well in the first half, getting to half time at 2-2. This was good, but our tiredness showed in the second half, and the final score was 4-2.

By this time Morgan was showing signs of physical and emotional drainage, which after an 08:00 start and 8 games under his belt I can understand why. With Aberfan next it wasn’t as though it was going to get easier. A 7-1 loss ensued, and getting a goal against them was enough of a victory for me.

The final game was Penzance, which is one that we could actually win. We played well, but there was a distinct lack of energy in the game. I cannot remember the score, but it was a Cardiff Victory, which meant we came 5^th out of 6 during the day.

Now for some photos: